


The Night of October 31st

by KASE1248



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen, Halloween, Haunted House, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, Mild Blood, Mild Gore, Mild Language, ghost story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-07 17:51:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16413086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KASE1248/pseuds/KASE1248
Summary: It's the season for pumpkin spice and candy.  Orange is the new black, graveyards are the liveliest place to be and nobody complains about the ghosts in their building.  Vampires are safe to walk the streets, witches' potions are on sale in every shop, and even spiders are encouraged out of their dark corners.  For one night a year, creatures of all shapes and sizes are invited to every party.  So it's time to don a mask, mix a spell and summon a demon.It's only Hallowe'en, the scariest night of the year.





	1. H

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first official Hallowe'en story. It's also my first official TMNT fanfiction. It's also _also_ my first official present tense work. It's a lot milder than I would have liked but I'm actually pretty happy with it. Horror/thriller is not my forte. But I hope you'll enjoy it nonetheless.
> 
> Turtles are 2k12, with some Bay Movie influence. I have no idea where this falls in the timeline: sometimes post s2 at least, but it's probably some kind of canon divergent timeline anyways.
> 
> Also it's been so long, I have forgotten how to do this.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _[Wouldn't you like to see something strange?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGiYxCUAhks) _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't supposed to post this yet but this fic was determined to become a chaptered fic, as opposed to the one-shot I intended, so it's getting posted now instead.
> 
> Happy Hallowe'en.

It’s been dark out since late afternoon, but as the hours tick past, the streets light up and flood with people. Waves of hyper kids, chaperoned by eager parents, spill out over the pavements; while a few blocks away, the streets are alive with people in costume parading through New York, lights and music galore. There are pumpkins on every street corner and spiders’ cobwebs infest even the cleanest apartments.

The night is Halloween and the candy is out in full force.

Mikey, perched on a nearby chimney, revels in all the costumes. His eyes are wide and shiny with excitement as he spots more costumes than he can count. From modern day pop culture figures to classic horror movie villains to dangerous job uniforms, there’s no shortage of imaginative characters and creatures parading through the streets.

He wonders if he would get candy if he went trick-or-treating; or if he’d just scare everyone, like they normally do.

“Come on, Mikey!” Leo shouts, interrupting his thoughts. “April’s waiting for us.”

With a sigh, the youngest turtle pulls himself away from the delights of trick-or-treating, and runs to catch up to his brothers, who are waiting impatiently for him on the next rooftop.

“Park should just be a few blocks away,” Donnie is saying when Mikey finally joins them. They’d had to take a detour to avoid the parade; too many people. “And the crowds are thinner this far out, so we probably don’t need to worry about being spotted anymore.”

“Alright, let’s get moving again,” Leo orders amicably, before casting a stern gaze at his orange-banded brother. “No more lagging behind; April can’t wait all night.”

Mikey pouts a little but follows his brothers as they leap across the rooftops.

“Leo,” he says hesitantly along the way. “Maybe after we’ve spoken to April, we can hang out and see some more of the parade?”

Leo has a firm no on his lips until he spots Mikey’s baby blues looking longingly at him. “Sorry, Mikey,” he responds gently. “You know we can’t risk being spotted. Splinter wants us straight home once we’re done here.”

Mikey does well to hide his disappointment but Leo can still see it and he feels a little guilty. He knows how much Mikey enjoys Hallowe’en, he usually hogs the TV every year to watch the parade, but there’s too many people on the streets. Too much of a risk of being spotted.

“You’ll get to see April’s costume?” Donnie supplies from behind, in an attempt to better the situation. “And Casey’s. And I’m sure they’ll share their candy with us.”

It’s a small promise but it’s enough to put a smile on Mikey’s face as he bounces across the rooftops. The sound of the crowds and parades are fading away into the background, the bright lights reducing to a warm glow over the city.

“Just another block away,” Donnie announces when they’re a few minutes away, clearly eager to see April.

And that’s when Mikey sees the house.

It’s tall and dark and looming from the shadows of the surrounding buildings. It looks old and creaky, the wood panelling on the walls splintering and rotting away, the windows boarded up and the front yard overgrown. It looks like the most stereotypical haunted house that Mikey’s ever seen.

The front door creaks open and a warm, inviting light spills out. Mikey steps towards it.

“Mikey!” Leo’s stopped again too, sounding mildly exasperated to be yelling for his younger brother again. Donnie and Raph stop a few feet after him. “Let’s go!”

Unlike last time, however, Mikey doesn’t react. He doesn’t turn back to his brothers and run to catch up; he just moves closer to the glowing entryway. He knows he should listen to Leo and go meet April, but he can’t quite bring himself to look away from this house. He wants to know what’s inside, and that warm light from the door is just enticing him closer.

“Mikey, come on, we don’t have time for this,” Leo sounds thoroughly annoyed now, as he marches back towards his brother. Donnie and Raph linger in the background, exchanging glances with each other.

Mikey either doesn’t hear him or chooses not to listen, as he reaches the house and climbs the steps onto the front porch.

“Mikey, stop,” Leo quickens his pace to reach his younger brother. “What are you doing?”

Mikey pushes the front door open wider and steps inside the doorway. Leo scrambles up the front steps and reaches for his brother’s wrist, intent on pulling him away.

“Mikey!”

The door slams shut, locking Mikey from his view. Inches from grabbing his brother, Leo stumbles back in a stunned fashion and nearly falls down the steps. Donnie’s at his side an instant later, while Raph makes for the door.

Inside the house, Mikey whirls around at the sound of a door slamming shut; only to find that the very front door he’d just walked through is now gone, like it had never existed. “Leo?” he asks in a small voice.

Outside, Raph pounds on the door, trying to open it again. “Mikey!” he yells, in the hopes that his little brother can hear him. “Mikey! Answer me!”

He tries rattling the door handle, only to find it firmly locked. He bashes his shoulder against it a couple of times to make it give way, only to wince at the solidity of the wood. He resorts to kicking it, with an angered growl, but the door barely creaks.

“It’s locked,” he snaps back at his two remaining brothers. “And it’s more solid than the wall.” He gives it one last kick.

Leo pulls out his lockpick tools and attempts to unlock the door instead. It’s a very standard lock, easy to manipulate but no matter how much he twists and turns the tools, he can’t get the door open. With a frustrated sound, he withdraws the tools; only to blink in confusion when he finds them all mangled and twisted, as if something had tried to chew on them.

“What the…” he glances between his tools and the lock and takes a very noticeable step back from the door.

In the background, Donnie paces and whips out his T-Phone, tapping away frantically on it. He tries to get through to Mikey but there’s no response, not a text nor a phone call. “I’m texting April,” he announces instead.

“Why?” Raph snaps. “What’s she gonna do? If we can’t get through door, then she’s not gonna be able to either.” He gives the door a hard shove for emphasis.

Donnie scowls at him a little. “We were supposed to meet her a few minutes ago. She’ll be wondering where we are.”

He texts her a brief rundown of events and then lets her know where they are so she can come meet them. She might not be able to get through the door but she might have some ideas, and a little moral support couldn’t hurt.

Leo runs his fingers around the edge of the door. “It’s sealed shut,” he observes, ignoring Raph’s flat look. “There’s no gap. We can’t get in this way. It’s like the door is physically a part of the wall.”

“Felt like it too,” Raph grumbled, rubbing his shoulder.

“Start looking for another way in,” Leo orders, clenching his hands into fists, trying to remain level-headed. “There’s gotta be a back door. Or an open window, or something.”

And if there isn’t, well, Leo will find a way to make one. No house is gonna separate him from one of his brothers.

Raph and he start circling the house. Checking each window. They’re all boarded up. Leo tries to pry the wood off and Raph tries to punch through it but there’s no give. The windows are well and truly sealed up. Raph kicks the wall, growling.

Leo’s fists squeeze tighter and tighter closed. His chest feels a little tight too. He doesn’t like this feeling. Mikey trapped behind an impenetrable wall. He hates being separated from his brothers by force. He hates that his little brother is missing; Leo is supposed to protect him, not let him get swallowed by a house.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Raph snaps at the eighth boarded up window, driving his fist into the wood. “What is with this fucking house?”

Leo would normally admonish him for his language but he feels exactly the same.

Raph punches the wall once and then once more. “Give me back my little brother!” He slams his fist against the wall again for effect then gives up. His knuckles are bleeding, scraped against the old, splintered wood.

“Let’s keep trying,” Leo moves along to the next window, letting Raph vent. There’s gotta be one that’s open. There’s gotta be away into this house, for Mikey.

“This is stupid,” Raph grumbles, massaging his hand. “How come Mikey could get in so easily? I mean, the door practically opened for him. But we get stuck out here?”

Leo pulls hopelessly on the wooden boards. “Doesn’t make sense,” he mutters in response.

He shivers, and not from the cold. His skin is beginning to crawl from simply being near the house. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth, like there’s something wrong with its very existence. Something dark and dangerous.

There’s only a few windows left but Leo’s already anticipating their luck with getting through them; he can pretend it’s less of a shock, because he was expecting it, rather than deal with the overwhelming guilt and disappointment.

By the time Raph and he make it back round the front door, April and Casey have arrived.

“I’ve never seen this house before,” she’s saying to Donnie. “I walk along this road every day and this house has never been here before.”

Donnie frowns in response. “Houses don’t just pop out of the ground. Maybe you just never noticed it before.”

“This house isn’t exactly normal, in case you haven’t noticed,” Leo points out.

“Why does it matter where it came from?” Raph interrupts harshly. “It has Mikey. That’s all that’s important right now.”

He kicks the front door furiously, as if the door will suddenly give in and open up.

“You’ve already tried that,” Donnie says unhelpfully.

“Well, what would you suggest, genius!?” Raph shouts, rounding on him.

Donnie huffs out a frustrated breath but steps up to look at the door. He taps on it with his bo, examines the doorframe, tests its strength. He’s not really sure what to do about this situation… until he spots the doorbell.

“We tried strength and we tried cunning,” he says. “Maybe we should just try _asking_.”

He presses the doorbell. A beat of silence and then the sounds of a bell chiming rings out. It echoes around them and then fades into the silence of the night. In the aftermath, Leo blinks, trying to remember if the doorbell had always been there.

Nothing happens for a long moment. The tension builds momentarily but the moment goes on for a just a second too long. Another lost cause.

Raph’s opening his mouth to… gloat, or something, when the door swings open.

Light pools at Donnie’s feet. Nobody moves. Not even Raph. For all that they’d been trying to get into the house, nobody seems to want to make the first move to actually go in.

“Where’s Mikey?” Leo breaks the silence with a whispered question; he’d been expecting Mikey to come running out as soon as the door had opened. He’s not sure what it means that he didn’t.

“Probably started exploring or something,” Raph responds tentatively, stepping towards the open door. “You know what he’s like. We’ll probably have to drag him out.”

“I don’t like it,” April says quietly. “I don’t think we should go in.”

Leo’s inclined to agree, but Raph rounds on them this time.

“Mikey’s in there,” he snaps. “We have to go in. We need to get him out.” The light spilling out from the house gives him an eerie glow. “I’m going in, even if the rest of you are too scared to come with me.”

“I’m going too,” Donnie speaks up, looking firmly terrified, but he grips his bo with determination. “We gotta find Mikey.”

Leo hesitates once more but there was never any argument. “For Mikey.” He turns to April and Casey. “You guys stay out here. As back-up. If the only way to open the door is to ring the doorbell, then we’ll need you guys to do that.”

April nods, although she looks put out at being left in the side lines. “I’ll be on my T-Phone when you need me,” she holds it up.

“Yeah, don’t worry, me an’ Red’ll hold up the fort out here,” Casey forces a reassuring grin.

Raph looks, and feels, distinctly more relieved to have his two brothers backing him up, as he faces down the front door. He knows why April and Leo hesitated, he can feel it in the air too, but none of it matters when Mikey’s missing.

“Let’s do this,” Leo commands softly from his left, and all three brothers step through the doorway into the house.

Behind them, the door slams shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aiming for nine, a maximum of ten, chapters for this fic.


	2. A

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _[You see a sight that almost stops your heart.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA) _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably the fasted I've ever uploaded another chapter lmao.

The light is coming from a candle chandelier, swinging gently in a non-existent breeze above them. The room is small, sparsely furnished with an old oak side table and a coat hanger in the corner. There’s only one way out, a darkened doorway leading to an unknown room, directly across from where the three turtles are standing.

Mikey must have gone that way, Leo thinks. There’s no light coming from the room, there’s no way to tell what’s through the doorway. Mikey could be in there, hiding maybe, waiting to give them a fright or something.

Leo is about to take a step towards the room when Donnie lets out an alarmed sound.

“Leo, the door’s gone,” he yanks his older brother round to look at the wall. “Look, it’s not there. But we came through here, didn’t we?”

Leo’s first thought is that this side of the door is designed to look like the wall, to hide it and freak people out, maybe. But there’s no tell-tale sign of a door, no seam in the wall differentiating it from the wallpaper. No painted over hinges and no door handle, even though the door opens inwards.

Leo glances at the other walls of the room, as if to check they hadn’t gotten turned around and the door is really on their left or right. But there’s nothing. The only exit to the room is the darkened doorway, but that leads further into the house, not out.

The door doesn’t seem to exist unless it’s open? That would explain why they hadn’t been able to get it open from the outside if it had literally ceased to exist the moment it had shut behind Mikey. And yet that somehow makes less sense: if the door no longer exists, how could it have opened again to let them in?

There is something weird about this house.

“Let’s find Mikey first,” he says, because his brothers are always the priority, “and then figure out a way out of here.”

There’s only one way to go and his brothers quickly follow in his stead as he heads towards the darkened doorway. Even getting closer doesn’t reveal anything about the room; it’s like there’s a veil of darkness between this room and that one. The light from the candle-lit chandelier doesn’t shine any further than the door.

Leo has to pause and take a deep breath before he steps through the doorway. Surprisingly, Raph doesn’t urge him to hurry or anything brash like that. Maybe he’s also hesitant to go forward, despite needing to find Mikey.

Anticipating a dark room, he’s surprised and mildly thrown, when he enters a room lit up by bright, artificial light. No candles here, but electrical lamps placed around the room to fill it with visibility. He blinks and glances over his shoulder. His brothers look equally surprised to find the room is bright, not dark like the doorway had suggested.

Behind them, the door leading back to the entryway – the entryway Leo knows is also lit up – falls into darkness.

The new room is some kind of living room. There’s a couple of sofas placed around an electric fireplace, and a coffee table with a scatterings of newspapers and magazines. There’s a display cabinet filled with ornaments, and a radio in the corner. It looks somewhat cosy; the perfect room to curl up in on a cold night like Halloween.

Donnie flips through a pile of magazines, drawing out a comic out from the bottom. He flicks through it; they’ve read a lot of comics over the years but this one is unusual. There doesn’t appear to be any kind of story, just panels of a man running through the pages and then banging on the image borders, like he’s trying to get out. There’s a few dialogue bubbles of him yelling for help and that he’s stuck.

The last few panels end with the man looking dejected as Donnie closes the back cover. He frowns, flicking through the comic in reverse, trying to understand what the point of it is.

His blood turns cold.

The man is running the opposite way through the pages, from the back to the front this time, waving his arms. There’s more dialogue as he begs to be freed. And then in the first panels of the comic, he’s reaching to try and get out, crying for help.

“Guys, something about this comic doesn’t make sense,” he says to the room at large, too perturbed to notice his brothers don’t really respond.

Donnie hesitates then flicks through the comic one last time. Once more, it’s changed. The man runs to the back page, and he’s yelling more and there’s some censored curse words and he looks increasingly desperate.

Donnie drops the comic back on the table and backs away; but not before noting how the front cover is the man, asking him not to leave.

On the other side of the room, Raph is examining the ornaments in the display. He’s not sure what drew him over here, but he peers through the glass of the display unit, glancing at each one. Some of them are animals, others look like houses and buildings; but many of them are people. Ballet dancers and fairies and angels and all sorts of graceful women.

Some of them look like they’re reaching out, their faces contorted into silent yells and screams. There’s one ornament of a woman curled up on the shelf, looking like she’s crying into her arms. Another ornamental woman is pulling at her clothes; and there’s a few of them frozen in similar poses: staring at their outstretched arms with fear and shock etched onto their faces.

There’s one down on the bottom shelf that looks like she’s looking at him. He can’t quite tear his eyes away, leaning in to get a good look. He can almost see her lips moving to form words, can almost hear her voice whispering at the back of his head: she’s asking for help, she wants to be free, can he free her…

Raph jerks back from the display case. “This house is playing tricks on us,” he laughs forcefully. “Pretty sure I just heard this ornament talking to me.”

He looks back at the shelves of ornaments and a chill goes through him. More of the small statues have turned to look at him. But they weren’t like that a few seconds ago. Only one had been staring at him but now it feels like they all are. All of them, reaching out to him, a chorus of voices begging for help. Even the one that had been curled up, crying, now has her head raised to look at him.

He spins away from the display cabinet, trying to laugh it off. He’s imagining things. He probably just hadn’t looked that closely the first time and their poses just look different now because he hadn’t memorized him.

“This house is freaky,” he forces another chuckle before realizing that he’s missing another brother. “Where’s Leo?”

Donnie drops a comic on the table and turns to face him, before also noticing their elder brother has apparently vanished without a sound. “He was here a minute ago. Leo?”

“Leo!”

Leo pokes his head through to the entryway. As he remembers, the room is lit by the candle chandelier, but when he pulls back into the living room, the entryway looks completely dark, like there’s nothing but shadow in the room. He steps through fully, frowning hard as he turns to observe the living room from this side of the door. Once again, the living room he knows to be lit up, is shown to be completely void of light.

“Hey, guys, you need to come see this,” he calls to his brothers, examining the doorway in the entryway with a frown. There’s no reply. “Guys? Raph? Donnie? You there?”

When there’s a second silence, he jumps back through the doorway, panic flooding through him. Maybe they had been injured in the few seconds he had looked away, or they had been grabbed by whatever it is that’s making the house so creepy. But it’s much worse.

Leo’s stomach drops as he observes the kitchen he’s walked into. And when he spins to face the door he walked through, he is panicked to find that it, too, is gone.

_What is wrong with this house?_

Back in the living room, Donnie lets out a shout. “Raph, the door is gone again.”

“What are you talking about?” Raph sounds increasingly frustrated. “There’s a door over there, there and there,” he indicated sharply to the three doors leading off of the room.

“Not the one we walked through,” Donnie snaps back. “There should be four. One leading back to the entryway. And the three others.”

“Forget about it. We gotta find Leo and Mikey.”

“But what if Leo went back through? How are we supposed to find him if there’s a magic brick wall in between us? And for that matter, how do we find Mikey? There are too many places to search and not enough of us.”

“Donnie!” Raph snaps authoritatively. It doesn’t quite suit him, but Donnie snaps to attention. “If we’ve lost our way back, then I guess we’ve only got one way to go.”

“Technically three,” Donnie corrects, but he shuts up at Raph’s glower.

“Let’s just make sure to stick together from now on, okay? I don’t wanna lose track of you too. It’ll be a pain in the ass to track you all down.”

Donnie nods vehemently in agreement. He doesn’t want to lose Raph either, especially in a house with disappearing doors and comic books that write themselves while you’re reading them. April had been right about not liking this house.

“Okay,” Raph relaxes a tiny amount when Donnie doesn’t argue. “Now, pick a door, genius.”

Donnie glances between the three possible options. Each one looks as gloomy and mysterious as the last. He’s not sure which one he wants to investigate first. A part of him just wants to find a way out but he needs to think about his missing brothers. Leo will be okay but he’s a bit more worried about Mikey. If he got lost in the house because the doors disappeared behind him, he’ll probably be majorly freaked out.

“The one in the middle,” he decides. There’s nothing in particular that draws him to that door, he just guesses. Maybe hopes is a better word.

Raph nods and, after a faint hesitation, moves towards the door. He glances over his shoulder a couple of times to make sure Donnie’s still behind him but the purple-banded turtle has all but glued himself to his brother’s side.

The dark doorway looms in front of them. It seems more daunting, perhaps now that they’re down two brothers and there’s really no telling what’s going to greet them in the next room. Especially since doors have a nasty habit of disappearing around here.

Raph puts his hand out to stop Donnie. “I’m gonna take a quick look first, then you can come through, okay?”

“Not okay,” Donnie counters. “We should go through together. Or we’ll just end up getting split up from each other as well.”

“You worry too much,” Raph responds, even though he had been making the same argument a few seconds ago. Of course, in those few seconds, it had occurred to him that _anything_ could be on the other side of that door; he wants to know what he might be leading Donnie into.

“It’ll only be a second,” he swears. “I just want to know what’s through the door. What if it’s a dead end? Might as well make sure before we go traipsing through. Then you can pick the next door for us to check out.”

Donnie sighs, knowing that Raph won’t relent. “Fine. Don’t see why we can’t just find out that it’s a dead end together, but fine.”

Raph ignores that. “Look, it’ll only take a second. I’ll go first and then you can come too. I just want to be sure.”

Donnie sighs again, but gestures for Raph to go first. Raph takes the cue and steps through the door to the next room, sparing one last glance to his brother before turning to survey the room.

Behind him, the door slams shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I said ' _door_ ' way too much in this chapter.
> 
> I'm currently attempting to write chapter 5 as I post this.


	3. L

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _[When my eyes beheld an eerie sight.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNuVifA7DSU) _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I'm summarizing each chapter with a song lyric: just to clarify, the song itself might not have any relevance to the plot each time, but the individual lyric will. Plus they're all Halloween-style songs, so it could also be considered my Halloween playlist for writing this fic (I mean it's not, but it could be)>

Raph whips back around at the sound of the slamming door. “Donnie!”

Donnie’s on the other side. Waiting for Raph to give him the all-clear, waiting to follow him through to the new room. But now the door is firmly sealed shut, no matter how much Raph rattles the door handle. He’s separated from all three of his brothers now and they’re all separated from each other. This is quickly becoming some kind of nightmare.

“Open, you stupid door,” he snaps, punching it hard enough to bruise his knuckles. “Let me find my brothers, for fuck’s sake.”

The door barely even gives. Just like the one out front, after Mikey had been swallowed by the house. Raph growls and kicks the wall. He’s really beginning to wish April had asked to meet the next day or any time other than this night on this street.

He turns back around, breathing heavily in frustration and anger and finally observes the room he’d walked into. It’s some kind of master bedroom: there’s a big, queen-size bed against one wall, framed by a canopy. It’s mostly covered by a heavy-looking, pale pink quilt, with a couple of pale pillows peeking out at the top. There is a bedside table on each side of the bed, and both are adorned with small lamps, which is providing the majority of the light for the room. There’s a matching wardrobe and dressing table, fully equipped with a mirror, against the opposite wall; and in the corner, there’s another door.

Giving the rest of the room little attention, Raph focuses down the doorway and stomps towards it. Only one way forward; and with any luck, he’ll find a way to circle back and meet up with his brothers.

*

Back in the living room, Donnie watches Raph get swallowed up by the darkness of the next room. He waits just a beat, just long enough for Raph to evaluate the danger of the room, before following.

The living room falls into a now-familiar darkness as he enters a study. Bookshelves line the walls by the number and there’s a desk in one corner, covered in inked papers. A quill sits inside an inkpot. There’s a crackling fire in the fireplace of the opposite wall; this one is clearly not electric, but has some arrangement of coal and paper alight within the grill.

Donnie ignores all of this.

There is no other exit to this room. It’s a dead end, like Raph had thought. Only one problem.

Raph isn’t here.

A closed off room. Raph had entered here a mere second before Donnie had, but where had he gone? Donnie’s alone, with just the sound of the crackling fire.

Panic begins to set in. How had Raph managed to disappear in a room with only one exit: back to the room where Donnie had been waiting?

Donnie stumbles back through the door he’d come through. He trips over a rug in his panic-stricken state, but the pain from the fall causes him to notice, and observe, his surroundings.

Mikey has occasionally had a panic attack, but right now, Donnie thinks he might be about to have one himself.

He’s not in the living room anymore. He’s in a long hallway, with various doorways leading off into unknown rooms. He had come from the living room, but somehow the door that had led back to that room is now leading him to a new area of the house.

Almost as if the living room had moved and this hallway had taken its place.

But houses can’t do that, can they? That would be crazy. And yet, this whole night has been crazy so far and Donnie can’t think of any other explanation. Unless they’re having some kind of mass-hallucination.

…Oh.

That’s actually not a bad theory either.

Maybe he fell and hit his head outside and this is some kind of Halloween-inspired, concussion-induced fantasy. Or he’s sick and he’s dreamed up this entire night. Or the Kraang found some kind of Dimension X chemical to poison him with. Or any number of reasons and causes that could result in a nightmarish dream.

But it means that none of this is real, right? Not the vanishing doors or moving rooms or Raph going missing or the comics that change while you’re reading them. This wall isn’t real and neither is the rug he’s sitting on and all those books in the study had been figments of his imagination; probably books he wishes he could own. Right?

_Right?_

*

In the kitchen, Leo is examining all the shelving and cupboards. This house is a weird mash of old-fashioned and modern day technology. From a living room with an electric fire and light bulbs in wired lamps, to a kitchen with candles and firewood and not a single plug in sight. Everything’s made of dark wood or chiselled stone; it has the feel of an older house and definitely one that’s haunted.

The kitchen itself is poorly lit, which does nothing to ease Leo’s nerves. The shadows feel like they’re creeping around him, stretching out to touch him and then receding into the walls just as quickly. He keeps glancing around, darting to the movements at the corners of his eyes. It’s like there’s something in the darkness itself, just waiting to grab him.

A shiver goes down his spine and he scrambles to snatch up a candle holder, one of the few sources of light. He paces the room, holding the flame up to illuminate each corner. There’s nothing but Leo still can’t shake the feeling of being watched.

In the corner, a cupboard door swings open.

Leo snaps to watch it sharply. It swings gently on its hinges but nothing else happens. His hackles start to go down, although he’s still on edge; how did the door open by itself?

Behind him, a pot suddenly clatters to the ground. The sound is deafening in the silence; and it sends Leo diving to the other side of the room, armed with his swords. His breath comes in heavy pants, his heartbeat pulsing in his ears.

He’s ready to confront whatever is in this room with him, but once again, there’s nothing. Nothing but shadows.

He fumbles to grab the lit candle and swing its light over the pots. The ceiling rack is swinging gently in a non-existent breeze. There’s the tiniest of sounds coming from the pots tapping against each other in the movement.

As his breathing levels out, he takes a tentative step towards the source of the sound. The pot that fell is just lying on the ground, looking unassuming. But Leo’s grip on his swords tightens as he gets closer.

Just as he reassures himself that it is just a pot, and nothing nefarious, there’s a crash behind him. Spinning around, he sees dozens of dinner plates flying out from the open cupboard. He’s forced to duck under the counter tops, as each plate shatters in spectacular fashion against all the walls.

His attention snaps to the drawers at his eye level as they start sliding open. Scrambling away from the counters, he watches, wide eyed and scared as the knives and forks and spoons start flinging themselves all over the room.

Pushing himself to his feet, he narrowly avoids a knife to his eye but takes a fork in the side as he makes a run for a door in the corner. He doesn’t even stop to think whether the door had always been in that corner, just slams through it and shuts it firmly in his wake.

There’s the sound of wood splintering as a number of cutlery pieces embed themselves in the other side of the door, but it fades away quickly. Leo leans against the door, breathing heavily in panic and slides down to sit on the ground as his knees give out for a moment. He just needs a second. Just a second.

As he forces himself to breathe slower, he takes a look around the corridor he’s landed in. It’s long, extending further than he can really make out. Doors lead off of the hallway every few feet; each one is shrouded in a darkness more ominous than the last. There’s no telling where his brothers are or how he is going to find them, without getting lost further inside the house.

He pushes himself back to his feet and sheathes his swords. He takes a few seconds to pluck the fork from his side, hissing in pain. It isn’t a deep wound, just sore, from the bluntness of the prongs and the force it had hit him with. He doesn’t have anything to patch it up with but there’s little blood so he shrugs it off and turns back to survey the corridor.

Only one way to go: forward.

*

Back outside the house, April paces the front yard, anxiously chewing on her lip while checking her phone every few seconds for a message from Donnie or Leo or anyone.

A few feet away, Casey looks a bit more chilled out, sitting on the steps of the front porch. “Will you stop pacing, Red? You’re wearing a hole in the grass.”

“They should’ve been back by now,” she responds, ignoring his request.

“You don’t know that. Maybe they haven’t found Mikey yet.”

“Okay,” she concedes before turning to thrust her phone in his face; he has to jerk back to avoid being punched in the nose, “so why haven’t they texted or called? I knew going into that house was a bad idea. Something’s happened, they need our help. They could be injured or stuck or, or worse. Casey, we have to do something.”

“Do what?” he catches her wrist before she punches him for real. “Leo asked us to stay here so we can open the door when they need out. If we go charging in there, then who’s gonna get _us_ out? You need to think about this, Red.”

She sighs, pulling away. There’s a knot in her stomach, she feels worried about the Turtles to the point of being sick, but Casey’s right. There isn’t anything they can do, especially since they’re trapped out here; and there’s no way to open the door without ringing the bell.

Just as she’s thinking that, there’s an ominous creaking sound. Both teenagers turn around slowly to see the front door inching open. Light spills out over the front porch.

They stare at the ajar door for a long moment.

“Looks like you get your wish,” Casey says finally.

April latches onto his wrist. “We can’t go in there,” she shakes her head. “We shouldn’t.”

Casey levels her with a disbelieving look. “A second ago, you were arguing that we should be trying to get in. And now that the house is offering to let us in, you wanna stay out here?”

She sees the way his face twists at his words as he speaks them. The idea that the house _wants_ them to go in makes him recoil too. But at the same time…

“You really think there’s something wrong with the Turtles?”

She nods. “Somethings not right.”

“Then we should know better than to ignore one of your gut feelings.” He shakes her off and climbs up the porch. He send her a shaky grin over his shoulder. “Besides, it was getting boring out here. No point in letting them have all the fun.”

She takes a second to glance around at the dark garden and the quiet street, before moving to catch up with Casey.

Just before they step into the house, she grabs his hand for reassurance.

This time the door closes softly behind them; swallowing them up with all the light in the front yard, leaving a quiet, empty garden behind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the time of posting, I am still writing Chapter 5; which is the chapter that gets posted on Hallowe'en. I've only got a bit to go on it and then I can move onto Chapter 6; hopefully both of those things will happen tonight.


	4. L

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _[I always feel like somebody's watching meee](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YvAYIJSSZY) _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Eve of Hallowe'en, here's today's chapter.

Donnie’s been sitting on the floor since he had come up with the theory that this entire situation and experience is just one big hallucination.

Somehow, the realisation itself has not been enough to wake him up from it. Which supports the theory that it’s a hallucinogenic poison of the Kraang’s. He thinks, in the case of a concussion or fever induced dream, this would all make sense to him and he wouldn’t realize that it isn’t real.

If he’s got to suffer through this nightmare, he might as well be pro-active about it. There are at least twelve doors for him to explore. There’s no telling what might be through the other side, but he doesn’t feel scared anymore. This whole house isn’t real, there’s nothing that can hurt him anymore. Just scare him.

At least he hopes so.

There’s a part of him that still wonders if this place is real. It doesn’t make any sense, but he can’t shake the feeling.

Still, he chooses to ignore it and pushes on. The third door on the right looks like every other door in the corridor, but it’s the one Donnie chooses. Who knows where it might take him. If he’s lucky, he might even find one of his brothers on the other side.

Even though they aren’t really here because this is just a hallucination, right?

The room looks normal enough. It looks like another living room, smaller than the last and furnished differently. There’s a smaller sofa and a couple of arm chairs, pointed at an old-fashioned television, which sits in one corner. There’s another coffee table but this one is clear of comics, something that relieves Donnie when he spots it. There’s another electric fireplace in the wall, albeit much smaller and it isn’t on. There are a few paintings scattered on the walls. Mostly seascapes.

Nothing in this room is remotely scary. Donnie scans it one more time but when nothing jumps out at him, he turns back towards the door.

Only to be stopped by the sound of static. He turns around slowly, his eyes darting about for the source of the sound, when he spots the TV.

It’s somehow switched itself on. At first there’s just noise on the screen but as he watches, the scene starts to form. It is a recording of this very room. It flickers in and out of focus a couple of times. Donnie squints in confusion but that slowly melts away to alarm as a woman glitches onto the screen. In between the flickers of the image, she is examining the room around her, before she seems to spot the camera filming her.

Donnie shivers. As the woman crosses the room and peers into the camera, it almost feels like she’s trying to peer out of the TV itself. Like the man from the comic. Both are – and had been – looking straight at him. As he stares back, the woman starts mouthing words at him. He’s no expert on reading lips though, but he wonders if she’s saying the same thing the comic man had been: asking for help.

His eyes are drawn to a TV remote, sitting on the coffee table. Moving slowly, he reaches to grab it and unmute the TV.

“Can you hear me?” the woman is asking, her voice echoing and disjointed from the speakers. “Can you help me? Please help me.”

Donnie blinks and swallows hard, his throat dry. “I can hear you.”

“Can you help me?” she repeats, pressing her hands against the screen. “Please help me.”

“I-I don’t know how,” Donnie glances at the remote. “How do I help you?”

“Can you hear me? I need your help.”

“Yes,” Donnie repeats, moving towards the screen. “I can hear you. Can you hear me?”

“You there,” the woman gets louder, banging her fists on the camera. “Turtle man thing. Can you hear me? Can you help me!? I need your help! Please, help me!”

“Yes,” Donnie repeats again, forcefully. He presses his hand against the TV screen. “Yes, I can hear you! Tell me how to help you!”

To his horror, the woman starts to cry, tears sliding down her cheeks and dripping off her chin. She looks dejected and turns away from the camera.

“He can’t hear me,” she whispers. “I’m trapped and he can’t hear me. Why can’t he hear me?”

“Wait,” Donnie leans in as close as he can. “I can hear you. I want to help you.”

There’s a pop that causes him to jerk back in fright; the TV screen goes black with a gasp, and silence fills the room. Donnie scrambles for the remote, pressing the power button as hard as he can, as many times as he can, but the TV stays dead.

He flips the remote over to find there are no batteries in it.

The remote slips from his fingers as he scrambles to his feet and bolts from the room, back into the long hallway, which is miraculously still here. He closes the door to the TV room firmly and swears to not enter it again.

Hallucination or not, this house is seriously freaking him out.

Time to pick another room.

(Donnie doesn’t notice the misty figure in the corner before it fades away into the wall.)

*

Raph charges through the bedroom to find out where the second door leads. He needs to find Donnie, to find all his brothers and then find a way out of here. That’s his only goal.

The next room looks like some kind of arcade, filled with games and consoles and all kinds of entertainment; the kind of place Mikey would drool over. But Raph doesn’t even stop to look at any of the games, not even the ones that are playing by themselves. He just continues to seek out the next door.

If his brothers aren’t in the room, then neither is he.

He locates another door and just carries on straight through it. He ends up in some kind of fancy dining room. There’s a long, wooden table surrounded by a dozen fancy, cushioned seats. Each place at the table is set with plates and bowls and cutlery and napkins, and there’s a vase of flowers in the middle, but Raph barely spares a glance towards it.

His brothers aren’t here, so there’s no point in sticking around. There’s a couple doors at the other end of the room, Raph doesn’t even care which one he picks. He’s got a 50% of being right either way.

Or wrong, apparently. This room is a dead end. No doors leading out of it. Raph sighs, heavy with frustration, and turns around to head back to the dining room, only to freeze.

The door is gone. He’s just walked through it, but it’s vanished. And there’s no other way out of the room. He’s trapped.

If there’s one thing that frustrates Raph, it’s being trapped while his brothers are missing.

He spins quickly, looking for another door out; he must have missed one when he came in. But there’s still nothing. It’s a small room. It looks like a store room, if he has to give it a name. Boxes piled against the walls; chairs stacked on top of each other in one corner; piles of old newspapers tied with string scattered on the floor. There’s a few years’ worth of dust over everything.

Except the mirror in the middle of the room.

It sits uncovered right in front of Raph. It’s surprisingly clean, given the surroundings. There’s nothing particularly noticeable about it, but he moves towards it to inspect it nonetheless.

It takes him a second to notice the movement in the reflection. What he can see of the room in the mirror is insanely dark; he can barely even see himself, and yet, he glances up to note the bare lightbulb, illuminating the room.

He looks back down at the mirror and his heart leaps painfully in shock.

There’s a girl in the mirror.

A girl who isn’t in the room; Raph glances around himself furtively but the room is empty.

The girl is standing next to him in his reflection. She’s dressed in white, with long dark hair. She looks a little pale, he thinks. Her eyes are closed and she’s swaying to music only she can hear. She twirls, and in the reflection, she bumps into Raph.

In the room, Raph flinches back, but there’s nothing there. No one to bump into him.

The reflection girl opens her eyes and blinks at him. Then she glances towards the mirror from her side and her face lights up. She runs across the room until she fills the mirror, and presses her hands against the surface of it. She’s mouthing words at him, but he can’t hear her. She pounds on the mirror’s surface, like she’s trying to break it.

Like she’s trying to break _out_.

Because she’s trapped too. But she’s trapped inside the mirror!

As she stares at Raph, mouthing words and banging on the mirror, he is suddenly reminded of the ornaments in the living room. Her stare penetrates him in the same way they had.

A horrible thought occurs to him: had the ornaments once been people who were now trapped inside the house? The way this girl is trapped in the mirror? He had dismissed their apparent movements as just figments of his imagination but what if they had been trying to ask him for help? He had heard voices at the time, hadn’t he?

In the mirror, the girl is beginning to cry. She’s still banging on the mirror. The edges of the reflection start to darken and suddenly the girl is frantic. A black cloud, with no apparent source, starts spreading across the surface of the reflection and the girl screams at him, tries to shatter the mirror one more time, before it swallows her up.

Raph is left to blink at a blackened mirror, until it clears, and reveals his own reflection standing in the room, in front of a door that swings open.

Raph spins around, sees the door, and slams through it in his hurry to get away from the mirror.

Expecting to find himself back in the dining room, he’s caught off guard by the sight of a long corridor, with door upon door down each wall.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

(He doesn’t notice the misty figure in the corner fading into the wall.)

*

There’s nothing particularly weird about the entryway that Casey and April walk into. It’s small, sparsely furnished and lit by a candle chandelier.

There’s only one door leading forward.

Even Casey stalls as they look at it. The house had wanted them to come in to look for their friends. There’s no telling what might be on the other side of that door.

Still, they’ve made it this far. At this point, they’ve made their choice.

April is the one who steps through first. She finds herself in a room filled with games consoles and gaming machines. It almost looks like an arcade of sorts. Many of the games are active, but there’s no one playing any of them.

Casey bumps into her shoulder behind her. From the look on his face, this was clearly the last thing he was expecting too.

“Weirdest house ever,” he comments. April’s inclined to agree, taking a step forward towards one of the games. It’s not a game she’s ever seen before. There are what look like low graphic prison bars down the screen and a person’s hands wrapped around them. They are trying to shake the bars, but they don’t move.

She moves on to check out another game. This one is of a person running at the screen, but they don’t appear to be going anywhere. A subtitles bar pops up, showing that the running person is asking for help, and to be free. But they just keep running.

All the games have a similar theme. There’s a character on screen trying to get out, apparently, but they never make any progress. They just keep trying to escape. April shivers. She can almost hear them asking for help, feel them trapped in the machines.

Casey taps her shoulder gently and she jumps, as if having forgotten that he’s there.

“We should keep moving,” he says; she can tell he’s unsettled too.

Moving on from the games, she notes two doors they can leave by, not including the one they entered from.

“Which door?”

“I’ll take the one on the right,” Casey decides. April grabs his arm, before he can go to it.

“We shouldn’t split up,” she says. “It’s too dangerous.”

“If we split up, we can cover more ground,” Casey points out. “We can find the turtles faster and meet up when we get out. Nothing’s gonna happen, don’t worry, Red.”

She wishes she could feel reassured by his words. But she nods anyway and lets him go. Still she doesn’t move towards her door, only watches as Casey disappears through his with a wave. She glances at the door on the left, but makes a split second decision to chase after Casey. It’s a lot more unnerving to explore this house on your own; speed be damned.

However, the house makes the choice for her, when she runs into a wall instead of through a door, as intended. Panic rises in her throat, when she realizes that the door Casey went through has disappeared.

“Casey?” she asks quietly, before raising her voice to a panicked shout. “Casey!”

She bangs on the wall, presses her ear up against it to see if she can hear anything. She reaches out with her telepathy to try and sense her friends, but there’s nothing. Nothing but a sudden, intense feel of fear. She pulls her powers back quickly and spins around on the spot to make sure she’s still alone.

Finally she looks at the only other door left. There’s only one way she can go now.

(She doesn’t see the misty figure watching her leave the room, before it fades into the walls.)

*

The first door that Leo picks leads him to a staircase, heading up. This room is clear of furniture; the talking point is clearly the paintings on the wall.

There’s a variety of images. Some are landscapes; a few are still life. Many are portraits of a lot of different people.

Most of them give him a shiver. The people in the portraits look tortured. Some of them are reaching out, others are pressing on the edges of the image. They’re crying or their mouths are open in a silent scream. He knows it’s probably fake, posed, but they look incredibly lifelike. Like the emotions are genuine.

He averts his eyes and instead looks at a couple of the seascapes as he climbs the stares. One of them is a nice sunset behind a beach house. He looks at it closely, admiring the paintwork.

Being named after a famous Renaissance painter has instilled an appreciation and understanding for the skill.

He’s about to move on when he spots an odd detail. There’s figure standing outside the beach house. It strikes him as odd, because he’s sure it hadn’t been there a moment ago. But it is a small figure; maybe he just hadn’t noticed it.

And yet, when he focuses on it, he spots a second figure right next to it.

He blinks, pulling away from the painting. Now there’s three. And now they’re big enough that he couldn’t have missed them.

“I must be seeing things,” he murmurs. He glances around at the other paintings, to make sure he hadn’t gotten confused or somehow managed to look at the wrong painting…

When he looks back, he jumps away, his heartbeat ratcheting up. The figures in the painting have grown big enough to have detailed faces and clothing. And they’re waving. At him.

 _Waving_ at him.

He can actively see the arm moving. It changes every few seconds, as if being repainted as he watches. Goosebumps rise on his arms, and he feels compelled to move. To get away from the picture. He listens to that instinct, and starts scrambling up the stairs, with a couple of frantic glances back at the seascape.

He’s beginning to calm down as he gets further away, only to notice, in all the other landscapes, there are people forming in front of his very eyes. There are moving people inside these pictures, running towards him, waving at him, trying to get his attention. His heart is beating painfully fast in his chest.

Even the portraits are moving, he notices with a sinking stomach. Their faces are changing, and they’re all starting to look at him.

He runs for the door at the top of the stairs.

(He doesn’t notice the misty figure at the bottom of the stairs, fading into the wall.)

He falls through the door and slams it shut behind him. Anything to put distance between him and those paintings.

He’s in a dark room, some kind of attic. There’s not much light so he can’t see very far into the room. But he hears the rustling. The soft footsteps. He reaches for a sword, but someone steps into the little light there is in the room, and for the first since he saw this house, Leo genuinely feels relieved.

“Mikey?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so the mention of April's powers does put this in the later half of S2 at least. I know it's after Mazes and Mutants but that's about as much thought as I've put into timeline placement. We can just _overlook_ the fact that Halloween takes place near the beginning of the seasons.
> 
> [Alternate summary song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utr5FwFOisg).
> 
> If y'all have any theories or questions about the plot, feel free to leave a comment below.


	5. O

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _[People are strange when you're a stranger.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awi14wDTxNw) _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest chapter yet. It's a freaking monster.
> 
> Original Female Character warning ahead.

Mikey’s not sure how long he’s been wandering through the house, but it feels like it’s been forever. It might really have only been a few minutes or maybe an hour, but time feels funny in this house. He keeps forgetting where he is or how he got there.

Either that, or the rooms keep moving.

After the door had closed behind him, he’d found himself in some kind of entryway. He’d tried to leave the house but front door had disappeared somehow. So instead, he’d gone through the only other available door.

He’d found himself in some kind of study. Books and papers, and a crackling fireplace. He’d wandered through to the next room, a dining room with a large table all set for twelve or twenty people. No food though, or candy, which had been a shame.

The room after that had been another study, but different from the one he’d visited first. It had been larger, with no fireplace and less bookshelves but a computer on one desk. The computer had been switched on and words typing across the screen. ‘ _Help me_ ’ over and over. Mikey remembers the bad feeling it had given him as he’d watched it, particularly when it had called out to him specifically. ‘ _I know you’re there_ ’ it had scrolled at one point, followed by ‘ _Please help me_ ’. Mikey doesn’t know much about technology as a whole, but he knows that a desk computer has to be plugged in for it to work. This one hadn’t been.

He’d found a kitchen, empty and abandoned. The pots and pans and plates and even the cutlery had thrown themselves at him, chasing him out of the room in a hurry. The next room had been a living room, adorned with couches and another fireplace; this one was fake, though.

There had been a display cabinet, filled with ornaments. Mikey had been intrigued until they’d started moving. Slowly, bit by bit, they had each looked at him and then started crawling towards him. If he’d listened to the silence long enough, he could almost hear the voices asking for help, asking to be free.

He’d left that room quickly too.

He’s not sure how many rooms he’s gone through; there had been ones with paintings that moved, and ones with televisions full of people trying to get out, and ones with mirrors and games and comics and books and that one with the music. On and on, people trapped in every room, begging to be free.

Things had gotten weirder when, completely and utterly freaked out and desperate to find his brothers, Mikey had tried to backtrack his path through the house. But somehow the door that had led back to that one bedroom, had become the door that led to another kitchen. From the kitchen, he hadn’t been able to find his way back to the study and he’d eventually become well and truly lost, each door leading him a new room he didn’t recognize.

The further he had gone, the more voices he had heard, the more trapped people he had found.

Now he’s seeking refuge in a dark attic, the only room he’d found so far to be void of voices and trapped souls, forgotten about in the depths of the house. But he has no idea how to get back to the front door; not that he even knows where it is, given that it had disappeared from the initial entryway.

He curls up in a corner, hugging his knees to his chest. He wonders if his brothers had come looking for him: he thinks they have, but whether they’ll find him or not is another question. This houses is confusing; at least for him. He hadn’t been able to find any of the rooms he’d visited previously, only new rooms.

He’s given up on finding his way out for now. He’ll just have to hope that his brothers will be able to find him, and that they know the way out.

There’s a thud in the room below him. He tenses up, shifting backwards away from the door. So far he hasn’t encountered anything friendly in this house. Only the souls begging for help or the apparent malevolent spirits, trying to scare or even injure him.

Still, he wonders if maybe it’s one of his brothers. He holds his breath, as the thuds get louder and then jumps as the door flies open. A figure stumbles in and slams the door shut behind it, taking a moment to catch its breath.

Mikey pushes himself to his feet and takes a few steps towards the figure, curious about what, or who, it might be, despite his fear. And then a voice breaks the darkness.

“Mikey?”

All of the tension floods out of his body at that word and he throws himself at Leo, relishing in the presence of his older brother. Leo seems equally relieved to see him, and they embrace tightly for a long moment.

“Am I glad to see you,” he mumbles into Leo’s shoulder, squeezing him tighter than necessary. He lets go quickly and pulls back with a wide, relieved grin on his face. “This house is seriously freaky. I couldn’t find my way back out.”

“I know what you mean, Mikey,” Leo gives him an affectionate head rub. “I got lost too. And I lost Donnie and Raph along the way. But at least I found you. What were you thinking, coming in here?”

Mikey shrugs sheepishly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to. But when we walked past it, it felt kinda like it was calling to me. Like it wanted me to come in here. And I wanted to see what it was like inside. This house doesn’t feel right.”

“Well, it is Halloween,” Leo responds lightly, trying to make his brother smile. “Maybe there’s a ghost that wanted to play.”

“Not a very nice one, then,” Mikey looks unconvinced. “It tried to throw one of the kitchens at me.”

“Yeah, that happened to me too,” Leo agrees, before frowning. “What do you mean, one of?”

“I’ve found, like, three. None of them had any food though. Or candy, for trick or treaters.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just the same one?”

Mikey shakes his head. “They all looked really different. I didn’t really explore them or anything, but they had different stuff for cooking. One had a microwave in it. And then one didn’t even have proper lights.”

“You’re right about this feeling wrong,” Leo says. “We should try to find the others. Is there another door out of here?”

Mikey glances back into the dark room. “I don’t know. I didn’t check. I was… waiting for you to get here first.”

Meaning, he had been too scared to go any further. But Leo doesn’t call him out on it. This house is freaking him out just as much as it is Mikey. If he could, he would totally curl up in a corner until his brothers find him too.

But as the leader, he has to be the one doing the finding.

“We stick together,” he orders firmly. Mikey nods quickly, fully in agreement. “I don’t want to lose you again, okay?”

Now they just have to find their other brothers, and then get the hell out of this house. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?

_Right?_

*

Casey’s gotta be honest; he’s not even sure where he is anymore.

Losing April after they’d entered the house had only made his movements more frantic: charging through room after room in the hopes that he’d eventually lay eyes on either the turtles or the redhead.

Outside, he’d known this house hadn’t been normal. But it’s only now that he’s beginning to realise how strange it really is.

Room after room after room, he’s gone through without stopping: never encountering the same room twice or even coming to a dead end that’s forced to retrace his steps back. There’s always another door, another room. He’s not even found any stairs, which, again, doesn’t make sense: this house had clearly been at least two stories from the outside.

He’s beginning to slow down. Beginning to take in his surroundings more, paying more attention the rooms he’s going into, to things that move in the corner of his eye, and to the voices that are begging for help. There’s no sign of anyone he knows, not even a sign that they had been in any of these rooms before him.

He pulls out his phone and attempts to text April. There’s no signal, which is crazy, because this house is pretty deep into New York City and he’d had full bars right outside. Somehow, the walls of the house are blocking the signal?

It’s not the strangest thing about it, to be fair.

But it means he can’t find out where anyone is, or how to get to them.

Or even why April hadn’t followed him. He hadn’t noticed for a few rooms that she hadn’t followed him, and by then he couldn’t quite remember which doors would lead him back to the arcade room to find her.

He hopes she’s okay. This house gives even him the chills, and normally he’s a sucker for anything related to the horror genre. He knows what the hockey mask makes people think of – or rather who, and he even embraces it when taking down Purple Dragons and Kraang.

Hell, he’s even dressed up a popular horror movie villain right now.

He can’t imagine what April must have been feeling about the house. Or how she might be feeling now, wandering through the same rooms he is.

He finds himself in a bedroom. A kid’s bedroom, to be exact. There are two small single beds at opposite walls. The wallpaper is bright and cheery, and yet looks extremely fake in the eerie shadows cast by the weak bedside lamp. There are children’s toys all over the floor. He almost steps on one and curses in relief when he narrowly avoids it. He’d like to be able to walk for the rest of the night.

He’s just about to make a move for the other door, when it suddenly slams open on its own. He jumps back, snatching his hockey stick from his back, brandishing it a threatening manner.

Only to relax when he recognizes the red-banded figure that enters the room.

“Raph,” he sighs with relief. “Thank fuck.”

“Casey!” Raph expresses a similar sentiment. “Am I glad to see you?” He pauses. “What the fuck are you doing in here anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be waiting outside with April so we have a way out?”

“Funny story, actually,” Casey huffs out a humourless laugh. “The door opened all on its own.”

“And you took that as an invitation?”

“April was worried. And, well, we know better than to ignore one of April’s feelings.”

Raph frowns. “Where is April?”

“Um, another funny story? Somehow we got separated?” Casey looks almost concerned that Raph will blow up at him upon hearing that.

Raph just grunts instead. “Story of the night.”

“Besides, not sure us waiting outside would have done you any good. There’s no signal in here. We wouldn’t have been able to call each other.”

Raph pulls out his own T-Phone to confirm. “Still doesn’t help us either if you and April end up lost in this house too,” he grumbles anyway.

“Well, all we gotta do is find someone who remembers the way back out.”

Raph snorts. “Ain’t that simple. The rooms have a nasty habit of moving about.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I don’t really know how or why or anything like that. But the rooms don’t stay put. I’ve tried retracing my steps a couple times, but the room I came from is never the room I go back to.”

Casey blinks. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well, nothing else in this house does either. I’m beginning to think there’s no way out.”

Casey looks about as unsettled as Raph is currently feeling, so at least they’re on even ground.

“So what d’you wanna do?”

Raph shrugs. “Keep going until we find the others. We can figure a way out from there.”

“Sounds good.”

“Which door did you come through?”

“What do you mean, there’s only one,” Casey glances over his shoulder. “Oh.”

There’s two doors behind him. There had only been one when he’d first entered the room; this must be what Raph is talking about. The way the rooms move around and open up new paths for them to take. It’d almost be cool, if not for the insanely creepy setting.

“The one on the left,” he answers after a quick moment to think about it.

“Then we’ll go through the one on the right, see where it leads us. Try to keep up, though. I’ve gotten split up from enough people tonight.”

“You mean you should try to keep up with me, right?” Casey responds with a cheeky grin, trying to instil some of their usual banter into the conversation, to try and ease the tension of their current situation.

Raph rolls his eyes but Casey knows his friend well enough to spot the slight smile on his face, in amongst all the frustration.

“Alright. Lead the way, Raph.”

*

Donnie finds his way back to a study. It’s a different one than the last one he had visited but there are still plenty of books lining the walls. Instead of rushing everywhere and panicking about being on his own, he’s browsing the book shelves.

This is all just some kind of hallucination anyway.

He can’t really read most of the spines: some of them are blank; while most of them have titles written in languages he can’t read. A few of them, he recognizes the Latin, even though he can’t translate them, but others, he’s not really sure what language they’re supposed to be.

He pulls out a couple to read, but unsurprisingly, the content isn’t in English either.

There’s a desktop computer, sitting in a corner. Text pleading for help scrolls across the screen constantly, but Donnie is trying his best to ignore it. The computer isn’t even plugged in, more reason to believe it’s not real.

He browses past a few more books before an odd sound catches his attention. He freezes, listening hard for any more activity.

Another thud comes from the other side of the wall behind him: where the door is.

He spins around to face it, drawing his bo instinctively. Of course it could be one of his brothers; in fact, it probably is. Or at least, his hallucination of them. Still, given some of the other things he’s encountered tonight, Donnie would like to be prepared for anything that could come through the door.

Even if it isn’t real.

The door flies open, someone stumbles into the room, and shuts it firmly behind them, leaning against it, as if to ensure it will stay closed.

“April!”

“Donnie,” April brightens the second she lays eyes on him. “Oh, thank God.”

“What are you doing here? I thought you were waiting outside.” Donnie sheathes his weapon, feeling relieved that it’s a familiar face. Again, even though it’s not real.

“I was, but, uh, I got worried. Casey and I came in to look for you, but then we got split up. I thought I wasn’t going to see any of you again for a minute there.” She looks slightly panicked but it slowly relaxing, now that she’s found Donnie. “What are you doing in here? Where are Raph and Leo?”

Donnie shrugs. “We got separated a while back. I was just checking out the books in here.”

April squints at him. “You don’t sound particularly concerned about that.”

“I’m not, really,” he responds. “I mean, I would be normally, but none of this is real, April. I’m pretty it’s just some kind of dream. Maybe a hallucinogenic agent from the Kraang.”

She blinks, hesitating for a moment. “Donnie,” she says gently, “I don’t really know what’s going on here, but I’m pretty sure it _is_ real.”

“It doesn’t make any sense. Doors disappear. The rooms move around. Comics change while you’re reading them. Have you seen the computer in the corner? It doesn’t make any sense, unless it’s not real.”

“We’ve faced things beyond our logic and understanding before,” April points out. “Each of those have been real. Just because you don’t understand what’s going on here, doesn’t mean it’s some kind of drug-induced dream instead.”

“Well, what do you think is going on here?”

“Halloween?” she suggests, smiling a little bit at his unimpressed look. “I don’t really know, Donnie, all I know is I wanna find everyone and get out of here.”

Donnie sighs and nods. “Alright, although I haven’t had much luck so far.”

“Yeah, me neither,” April chuckles humourlessly. “All I’ve found so far is a kitchen that tried to kill me. Threw all the kitchenware at me. Almost got stabbed by a flying fork.”

Donnie frowns. “From that door?” he points to the only door in the room.

“Yeah.”

“I came through that door too. Except I came from a hallway, not a kitchen.”

April looks surprised. “I mean, you did say the rooms moved around, right?”

“I mean, yeah, I assumed,” Donnie steps around her to open the door. “That’s how I got separated from Leo and Raph. And why you get lost in the house so easily. Because nothing is ever where you left it.”

He pokes his head out the door; it’s neither the kitchen nor the hallway now, it’s a room with a grand piano. April joins him, peering over his shoulder.

“Weird,” she says. “But better than hanging around in the study for hours on end.”

“I don’t know,” Donnie frowns. “They always tell you to stay put when you get lost. I mean, if we’re looking for the others, and they’re looking for us, then we’ll just go round and round in circles.”

“Maybe,” April responds, beginning to sound a little unsure. “I mean, it would probably make it easier for the others to find us, if we just wait where we are. There are plenty of books to read, after all.”

“They’re not in English,” Donne says absently. He’s about to agree, and retreat back to the study, where he knows there’s nothing to be worried about, when there’s a sudden pressure on his shell and he goes stumbling through the doorway, pulling April with him.

“Donnie!” she cries out, as they land heavily on the floor.

“That wasn’t me, something pushed me,” Donnie struggles to sit up under April’s weight, but his heart sinks when he realizes the door they’d been looking through is now gone. “I guess the house decided for us.”

April clambers off of him, and glances at the empty wall, confirming for herself that the door was gone. “Well, it’s not too bad. We’ll just wait here instead. I mean, there’s a grand piano.”

Donnie dusts himself off. This room looks like it hasn’t been touched in years. Dusty and dark, the only thing of note is the grand piano in the middle of the room. It looks shiny and brand new, compared to everything else.

There are no other exits out of the room. Hopefully a door will open up at some point, preferably when his brothers find him.

The soft sound of piano keys being played breaks the silence.

“Um, Donnie?” April’s voice is unusually subdued.

“I didn’t know you could play the piano,” he responds, turning to look at her. He’s momentarily confused by her wide-eyed fearful expression, until he comes to the realization that _she’s not the one playing the piano_.

April moves closer to him and he steps in front of her, as they both spin to face the piano. The keys are clearly being pressed down, forming some sort of tune that echoes around them eerily, but there is no one and nothing sitting on the piano stool.

There’s a long pause, in which both of them just stand there, on the defensive, watching the piano play a short tune, repeating over and over. And then April frowns.

“I think I know that tune,” she says. “I’m sure I’ve heard it before.”

“It’s called Hallowe’en,” a new voice startles them both. Donnie lets out a very dignified yelp and whirls round to find a strange girl standing in a new doorway. He pushes April behind him, drawing his bo.

“He plays it every year,” the girl continues. “He think he’s funny.” She shakes her head and turns her gaze on the piano. “Play some Beethoven, you ignorant.”

The music from the piano cuts out abruptly, but a second later picks up a new tune.

“Who are you and how did you get in here?” Donnie brandishes his weapon a little.

“Oh, I’m sorry, where are my manners? My name is Liana. It’s nice to meet you,” the girl curtseys, oddly enough. “I live here. Well, as much as one can live here when one is dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally don't know how to write without involving my OCs in some way, honestly. If that bothers you, I'd stop reading now. She'll be in the rest of the fic and I introduced her to the 2k12 series so I have plans for a series revolving around her adventures with the turtles.
> 
> It's just the way I write, dudes.
> 
> [Hallowe'en](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF7i5z1Oqco) and [Beethoven](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mVW8tgGY_w).
> 
> Also I told literally _everyone_ about that scene at the end with the haunted piano playing the theme from Hallowe'en on Hallowe'en.


	6. W

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _[If there's something weird and it don't look good...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9We2XsVZfc) _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys probably don't realize this yet but the overall summary of the story _does_ actually hint at the plot. Which, y'know, as a summary is exactly what it's supposed to do, but I know mine is super vague and mostly irrelevant to the greater plot line.

Donnie and April exchange a glance with each other.

“You’re dead?” April echoes hesitantly. “So you’re some kind of ghost?”

“Yep,” Liana nods the affirmative.

“So you’re the one haunting the house?”

“Well, not the only one, but technically.”

“So you’re the reason this house is messing with us? You split us up from our friends, and threw the kitchen cupboards at me and all that other stuff?” April clenches her hands into fists, staring hard at the supposed ghost.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” Liana raises her hands in a gentle surrender. “I don’t have anything to do with the house, okay? I just died here. This place has been around for a few centuries longer than that.”

“So, what, the house was haunted before you died?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I’m not the only one here. What do you think happens to everyone who’s inside the house when it disappears? Now _those_ guys have got a reason to be malevolent.”

“Wait, what do you mean the house disappears?” Donnie interjects sharply.

“Um, I mean, at 2am on the night of Hallowe’en, it stops existing. The same as every year.”

“Hold on,” April interrupts. “I feel like we’ve skipped important parts of the conversation here. Can you start from the beginning? What exactly is the deal with this house?”

*

“How do we find the others?” Mikey asks, as he and Leo wander their way through the house. At the moment, it seems they’re just hoping to randomly run into someone they know.

Leo’s not really sure. There isn’t really any way to find them, since his T-Phone doesn’t have any signal; and even if they did know where anyone is, there’s no feasible way to reach them, since the house keeps moving rooms around.

It’s like it’s trying to keep them split up. In fact, he’s almost lost Mikey twice since finding him; it’s only by some miracle he’s been able to prevent the doors from closing between them, trapping them in two separate rooms.

“Why don’t you try?” he turns to Mikey, who blinks in confusion.

“Me? Why me?”

“Because you’re better at video games than me.” Mikey’s always been really good at finding his brothers. It’s like an instinct he doesn’t seem to realise he has; somehow he never gets lost in the sewers or in the city, because he can always find his way back to his family.

Mikey shrugs and accepts the reasoning. He glances at the two doors they have in front of him, thinking hard, before deciding on the door on the left.

Leo doesn’t question his decision, just follows his younger brother through the door.

He’s not sure if it’s a sign that Mikey’s instincts are leading them in the right way or they were just incredibly lucky but for the first time in a while, they actually end up in a room they recognise: one of the bedrooms.

Mikey doesn’t stop, just heads straight through the next door.

Leo’s disappointed when he doesn’t recognize the next room. It’s a library of sorts, apparently. Books lining every wall and shelves throughout the room and the occasional comfy-looking armchair. It’s lit by candlelight, dotted on small end tables at the end of the rows. Leo thinks it ought to be some kind of fire hazard.

“Where to now?”

Mikey seems hesitant as he observes the room. “I don’t know. Where are the doors?”

Leo glances around the room. Taking a few paces further in, he manages to locate one door. Further exploration reveals two more exits; but when he looks at Mikey, his brother is absently shaking his head.

Either none of these doors are right, or they lead to the wrong rooms.

But they can’t stand here all night. “Guess we just pick which ever one sounds best,” he says, subtly urging Mikey to go for the door he’s resisting the least.

Before they can make a move though, there’s a thud behind them.

Mikey startles more than Leo, but they both spin around to spot a book on the floor. There’s another thud, coming from the direction they were just facing, and a look over their shoulder reveals a second book, also lying on the floor.

Leo steps into the middle of the room, just in time to see a dozen or so books fall off the shelves one after the other. One by one, every book he can see get knocked from the shelving. Some of them hit the floor but the rest of them go spinning around the room in various directions: Leo has to duck and Mikey almost gets smacked in the chest.

At first, only a couple of them are spinning in circles but slowly they sweep more and more flying books into the rotation; even the books on the floor get pulled in.

A tornado of books and paper starts to form around them, as all the shelves empty of literature. Leo makes a grab for Mikey, pushing him out of the way of a couple of hardbacks with sharp corners. They’re blocked off from the doors, unable to even see them, unless they wanna risk ducking through the whirlwind of books; but it’s moving so fast and threatening that even Leo’s cautious; and it’s _just paper_.

And then, for no reason at all, it just stops.

The books and papers just suddenly stop moving, frozen in the air. Mikey and Leo glance at each other, both equally tense and wary for the moment they start spinning again. But there’s nothing; in fact, the exact opposite happens, when the books tumble to the ground.

In the stunned silence of the aftermath, there’s a sharp breeze that blows out two candles; but directs their attention towards a new door. Mikey lights up when he spots it and forgets all about the book-nado, in his haste to run to it.

Leo quickly follows, sparing one last glance at the mess of books on the floor, before they both tumble through the door into a new room.

*

“Do you even know where you’re going?” Casey asks. Raph sighs and scrubs his face.

“No, but I don’t think it would even matter in this damn place.”

“Well, we can’t just go through the house, hoping for the best. We need a plan.”

“Do you have one?” Raph snaps heatedly. “Because I sure don’t. There’s no way to predict what room we’re gonna find next; how do we plan for that?”

Casey doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t really know how to work around the way this house seems to exist. Raph would normally take that as a win, but this situation is too frustrating for any kind of gloating.

“This place is a damn nightmare,” he mutters, kicking a nearby piece of furniture. He’s not sure how many rooms he’s gone through at this point; he’s lost count. “Forget losing my brothers. I’m gonna lose my sanity in a minute.”

“Maybe we should just take a minute, catch our breaths,” Casey suggests. He’s getting a little antsy himself, bordering anger and frustration but trying not to be stupid about it.

“And then what?” Raph asks sharply. “Taking a breather isn’t gonna help us find my brothers. Or April.”

“Neither is charging into every room like an idiot,” Casey argues back.

“Well, what would you suggest? It’s not like we know what’s gonna be on the other side of the door. We can’t exactly plan our next step when we have no idea where it’s gonna take us.”

Casey makes a grumbling noise but he knows Raph has a point. Just like Raph knows Casey has a point. The argument will just go round in circle, because neither of them are willing to concede to the other’s perspective.

But that’s not going to happen.

Instead, both of them are distracted by one of their potential exit doors swinging open. Casey reaches for his hockey stick and Raph shifts to a defensive stance.

Mikey and Leo stumble through the door.

The way Raph’s heart leaps, as relief floods his system, is a feeling he probably will never forget. He moves to meet his brothers in the middle of the room and drags them both into a tight hug.

“Raph,” Mikey buries himself happily into the embrace.

“It’s good to see you,” Leo says, equally relieved, as he disentangles himself. “And you, Casey. Thought you were supposed to stay outside.”

Casey shrugs sheepishly. “April had a bad feeling so we found a way in.”

“Where is April?”

“Uh, funny story. We kinda got separated?”

Once again, Casey looks wary that Leo might be angered by that knowledge.

He just makes a displeased noise and shakes his head. “Well, if this kind of luck keeps up, maybe she’ll walk through one of the doors, with Donnie in tow.”

Mikey finally pulls away from Raph’s hug. “And then we can find a way out, right?”

“Hopefully, little brother,” Raph agrees, although he turns to look sternly at his younger brother. “And when we do, we’re gonna have a serious talk about you entering creepy, abandoned houses on Hallowe’en.”

Mikey smiles slightly, ducking his head. “My bad.”

Over his head, Raph exchanges a glance with Leo. Finding each other is one thing; finding a way out is a completely different thing entirely.

“Alright,” the leader steps forward with an authoritative voice. “Let’s go see if we can find Donnie. Mikey, pick a door.”

Mikey glances between their available options and marches towards one on the other side of the room.

“Isn’t that the one we came through?” Casey asks Raph, who shrugs; he hadn’t exactly been keeping track.

“Well, I guess we’re going back that way,” Leo nudges them into following Mikey. “He’s the one who picked the door that led to you guys. We should let him take the lead on this.”

Casey looks mildly confused, but Raph looks exactly like he understands Leo’s decision. Both of them head towards the door Mikey’s currently disappearing through.

There’s a spike of fear in Raph’s blood that pushes him to hurry through after his younger brother, but surprisingly, Mikey’s right on the other side of the door. The house hadn’t taken him away in the few seconds they’d been separated.

Casey stumbles through a second later, and he still looks mildly surprised to find that they’re all still together; even though he and Raph had managed to stick together the entire time since they’d found each other.

Leo steps up to follow his friend and brothers; but to his absolute horror, the door slams shut in front of him, leaving him on his own.

On the other side of the door, Raph, Mikey and Casey whirl round to see the closed door behind them, separating them from their leader.

“Leo!” Raph slams against the door, rattling the door handle. “Leo!”

He’s about to try and punch his way through the wood when, on its own, the door handle turns and the door swings open to reveal Leo standing on the other side, a look of utter bewilderment on his face at the sight of the door reopening in front of him.

“Well, that’s new.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt there wasn't enough _ghost_ factor in the last couple of chapters so I added in a book-nado. You're welcome.
> 
> Also, this chapter was supposed to include the thing the fic summary hinted at but it didn't quite work out that way, so I'll tell you when it _does_ come up.
> 
> Casey is more 2k16 than 2k12. And I feel like the lack of familiarity with the thriller genre is affecting my ability to write the characters, um, in character? So I know it's a bit hit and miss with the interactions. I hope you'll overlook that enough to see the larger picture of the story, though.


	7. E

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _[I put a spell on you.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua2k52n_Bvw) _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay on this chapter, I got distracted by the Overwatch World Cup so it's a little later that I originally meant it to be.
> 
> You might have noticed that I've updated the chapter count to total 9. Like I said, I was expecting to make this fic around 9 chapters, with a possible tenth bonus chapter, and it's nicely working out that way. I'll probably clarify my reason for chapter count on the last chapter; even if you've already noticed.

If Donnie had any doubts about this new girl being a ghost, then, well, they’re beginning to clear up fast.

This is the second time in the past few minutes she’s had to stop from a sudden drop in energy. Aside from looking tired and unsteady, she’s also looking somewhat transparent and misty, right in front of him; exactly like a ghost.

He wonders if she would be solid if he tried to touch her.

He doesn’t want to find out.

“Are you okay?” April asks, looking concerned. On one hand, a ghost probably isn’t affected by much anymore because they’re dead; but on the other, it must be something pretty dangerous to affect a ghost.

And if what she’s said about the house is right…

The ghost girl waves her off. “No worries. I got it under control. Let’s just focus on finding your friends.”

That’s the other thing. Donnie doesn’t know if he can trust a ghost who’s haunting a house like this, but she seems to know where she’s going: which is quite the feat in a house like this.

Still, he and April exchange glances with each other along the way. There’s no telling where they might end up; there’s no way to know if the ghost is telling the truth or just leading them further astray. Particularly if this house is known for trapping souls.

But he can’t complain that he doesn’t recognize some of the rooms they end up in. April is wary when they enter a kitchen but they make it out unscathed. Donnie keeps his distance from a TV in one of the living rooms. There’s a bedroom or two, another kitchen, an attic, a staircase, a library…

Donnie’s about to confront the ghost about leading them on a wild goose chase, when she points to a door in front of them.

“There you go.”

There’s a beat as Donnie observes the door. “My brothers are through there?”

“They should be. If I’m right about where we are.”

Donnie glances at April again. The fact that Liana isn’t going through the door first puts him on edge. She looks equally suspicious.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” Liana seems to have missed the looks behind her back.

“Why don’t you go through first?” Donnie both asks and suggests. The ghost blinks at him.

“If you insist. At the very least, I’ll open the door for you. But you can make sure to introduce me to your friends. I find people can react very negatively to my presence when they are already freaked out about the house.”

Donnie, sarcastically, wonders why.

But she’s as good as her word, moving forward to open the door in a fluid movement. There’s one of those dark veils between this room and the next, but since Liana was willing enough to go near the door and even open it with the promise of stepping through, Donnie decides to take the plunge.

He steps through the dark doorway…

And collides with a hard body. Stumbling back a step, Donnie’s face breaks out into a smile when he realizes it’s Raph; with Leo, Mikey and Casey right behind him.

“Donnie,” Mikey cheers, shouldering Raph out of the way so he can pull his other brother into a tight hug.

“Hey, Mikey,” Donnie embraces him back. “Good to see you.”

He glances over his shoulder as April follows him through the doorway and also lights up with a smile, moving to greet Casey, and Leo. Finally, Liana steps through, closing the door behind her. She glances at Donnie and nods faintly.

Perhaps she can be trusted.

That’s roughly around the time Raph spots the ghost in the corner.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Oh, hi,” she smiles. “I’m Liana. I was helping your friend find his way through the house.”

Raph glances to Donnie to confirm, who nods.

“She knows about the house,” he says. “Like what it is. I mean, if you believe her, that is.”

“Why, what’s the house?” Leo asks, directing everyone’s attention back to the ghost.

“It’s a demon,” she answers easily.

There’s a beat.

“How can a house be a demon?” Raph asks incredulously.

“I don’t know, how can four ninjas be mutant turtles?” Liana fires back. There’s a couple of glances between the group: how does she know they’re ninjas? Or mutants, for that matter?

“Aliens,” Donnie supplies as an answer.

“Magic,” Liana matches his tone.

“So it’s not haunted?” Leo interjects.

“Well, yes and no. I mean, I am a ghost. And there are spirits of people trapped inside the house; you’ve probably encountered some along the way. Like in paintings or televisions or mirrors. But they’re just symptoms. The house itself is a demon, from the depths of some Hell. It’s the real problem here.”

“Okay, can we just backtrack here?” Leo waves a hand in the air. “You’re a ghost?”

“Yep,” Liana nods the affirmative.

“So you’re dead?”

“That is the most common cause of spiritual embodiment, yes.”

“But you’re not trapped?” Mikey asks, leaning forward in his curiosity. “You said everyone else was trapped.”

“Ah, yes, well, the difference between me and them is that I was already dead when I entered the house. They died when the house disappeared and took them with it. I mean, it only appears on Halloween, so everyone in here has been gone for at least a year; you can’t survive that long without food or water, even if the house didn’t kill them. The house preserves their spirits; but, as I’m sure you can tell, they’re all very much aware of their trapped existence.”

“How long have you been dead?” Mikey doesn’t seem concerned that his question might be insensitive, despite Donnie’s alarmed look.

Liana doesn’t seem bothered. “Let’s see, what year is it? About 70 years.”

“You don’t look seventy years old.”

Liana smiles and shrugs. “I don’t really feel that old either. But then, I’m really only aware of my existence for one day a year.”

“How come?” Leo asks. “How can a house only exist one day a year?”

“Well, it’s a demon. So it spends most of its time in whatever Hell it belongs to? But on Hallowe’en, the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. So even the ones _chained_ to another dimension are able to come through to for a few hours. Like this one.”

“So when does it disappear?”

“2am. Usually on the dot. I’ve never seen it go any later. It’s like the veil works on some kind of schedule.”

“Donnie, what time is it now?”

Donnie whips out his T-Phone. “1am.”

“We’ve been in here for 2 hours?” April interjects with disbelief. “That can’t be right.”

And yet, when they all pull out their phones to double-check, the clocks all say the same thing.

“Your perception of time passes differently in here,” Liana explains into the following silence. “Part of the trap. You think you have three hours to escape, but it passes differently to what you’re used to. And then the house is disappearing with you still inside. Like you’ve been here for two hours, but it doesn’t _feel_ like two hours, because you’re comparing it to what two hours normally feels like. And things feel different in this house.”

“So, what, an hour is gonna be over in five minutes?” April asks.

Liana shrugs. “Perception is awareness."

April blinks at the cryptic response.

“So how do we get out?” Leo asks, passing over her words.

Liana looks seriously at the group for a long moment. “I might be able to lead you to the front door. But it’ll be tricky. The house will be trying really hard to keep you trapped here.”

“You’ll lead us?” Raph cuts in incredulously. “Who put you in charge?”

“Raph, she led us to you,” Donnie speaks up quickly. “We would have just been wandering around, getting even more lost, if she hadn’t helped us.”

“Yeah, well, we would have found you. Mikey was about to take us through that door,” Raph points at the one that Liana’s standing by, “before you came through it yourself.”

“I only came through it because Liana told me to,” Donnie argued. “She knows this house better than anyone. Why shouldn’t we trust her to lead us out?”

“Because she said so herself, she’s a part of the house. She’s probably in on its little trap.”

“Actually, I just live here,” Liana quickly corrects but she backs down at Raph’s glare.

“Enough,” Leo silenced the room. “If Liana knows the way out, then I don’t see why we shouldn’t trust her to take us there. I don’t exactly see any alternatives.”

They all turn to face the ghost, who looks mildly uncomfortable at the attention.

“I said I _might_ be able to get you out,” she says. “There’s not really a set path, the door moves around a lot. The house doesn’t want people escaping. It could send us to one side of the house, only to move the door at the last second. And then we’ll run out of time to get you out before the house disappears.”

“Well, it’s better than nothing,” Leo responds. “I’d rather take my chances with you than sit here, waiting to accept our fate.”

“Fair enough,” Liana shrugs.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Raph asks cautiously; the ghost pretends not to hear.

“Unless you have a better one, Raph, right now it’s our _only_ idea.”

“What about Mikey? He found his way to us easily enough.”

Leo shakes his head. “We’re family. The front door isn’t. And I don’t know how much of his instincts extend outside the house. We don’t even have any phone signal in here.”

Raph grunts in acknowledgement. He still doesn’t trust the ghost that haunts the house that wants to trap them forevermore and so on; but he does trust Leo, and particularly Leo’s assessment that, right now, they don’t exactly have any other options.

Leo waits until he gets Raph’s nod of agreement before he turns back to Liana. “Okay, you’re up. Lead the way.”

She smiles brightly at them. “Alright, let’s get you guys outta here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyway, the summary of the fic mentions " _summoning a demon_ ", and well, the house is a demon, so that's how that all fits in.
> 
> Casey kind of fades away during this chapter; I couldn't really find anything for him to say, but I guess he just lingered ominously in the background. Also, yeah, it was eleven at night when the Turtles went to meet April and Casey but got sidetracked.
> 
> I don't really have a set word count per chapter but this is the shortest one yet.


	8. E

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _[They send me away to find them a fortune.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8V5dAli-Q) _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have you ever tried writing a Hallowe'en story _after_ Hallowe'en? It's really hard; all the inspiration fades away and the aesthetic disappears and the mood is gone. I'm actually surprised I managed to finish this chapter but I did make a promise to myself and to my readers, so I'm following through.
> 
> For the record, this is why I don't write chaptered fics but this one became one of its own volition.
> 
> Anyways, a week and a half late: here's Chapter 8. Trigger warning for blood ahead.

“Do you even know where the door is?” Raph asks suspiciously, as they follow Liana down a long corridor littered with doorways. Most of them remember having entered the hallway at some point; Donnie shivers faintly as he observes a couple of passing doors.

“Mm, yes and no,” she responds. “I don’t know where it is exactly because it has a tendency to move around without warning. But I do know that it is currently in this general direction,” she waves her hand in front of her.

“And how do you know it won’t move when we reach it, like you said it might?” Donnie speaks up from the back of the group.

“Because I’m hoping it won’t.”

“Oh, yeah, let us just put all our faith blindly in your ‘ _hope_ ’,” Raph snorts, unimpressed.

“How do you what direction the door is in?” April asks. “I mean, this house is too complicated and weird for even me to read.”

“It’s a special talent,” Liana answers simply, but it’s easy to see she’s not telling them the whole truth.

“That’s not really an answer,” April counters.

Liana shrugs. “Not everything needs an answer. Sometimes you just have to accept it.”

“Sounds like you’re trying to trick us,” Casey murmurs from behind.

“I’m aware,” Liana responds.

“For all we know, you’re the one who got us lost in this house in the first place,” Raph decides to elaborate, loudly. “Putting us in a position where we have no choice but to follow you, probably to our deaths.”

“Yes,” Liana stops abruptly, almost causing Leo, who’s directly behind her, to bump into her. “I’m aware of how this looks and I do not blame you for being distrustful. Unfortunately, there isn’t really anything I can do to prove to you that I am on your side; anything I do will simply look like I’m trying to earn your trust to trick you further. I guess you’ll just have to _hope_ that I’m your ally.”

Raph folds his arms and eyes her suspiciously, but she’s right. Just like Leo had been before they’d started traipsing down this long corridor. Their only other choice is to just sit and wait for the house to disappear.

“How long do we have left, Donnie?” Leo asks. Donnie checks his timer.

“Just under an hour,” he responds, but then he kind of stops and frowns. “We’ve been walking for a lot longer than 5 minutes, haven’t we? But we’ve still got plenty of time before the house disappears for the night.”

“Like I said, your perception of time is warped,” Liana says from the front of the group. They’re nearing a door, and she gestures for the group to follow her through.

“But we somehow went through two hours in what felt like less than an hour; but now, what, five minutes feels like over half an hour?” April is shaking her head as she tries to understand this house.

“You should hold onto that perception,” Liana says. “So it feels like we have loads of time to get you out. It’ll make for good progress.”

“This house is fucked up,” Casey speaks up, ignoring Leo’s muttered, “ _Language_.”

“I think it’s kind of cool,” Mikey suddenly says. “I mean, it’s scary and not being able to get out isn’t awesome, but all the moving rooms and stuff. I think it could be fun for, like, a game or something.”

“Mikey’s right,” Casey agrees. “This would be the perfect Halloween attraction; y’know, if it wasn’t a demon that wanted to trap our souls.”

“Speak for yourself,” April shudders. “I’ll be glad to see the back of this place once we get out. Go home, change into something comfy, go to bed with some hot chocolate and just forget all about this.”

“Until next year,” Donnie points out, causing everyone to turn and look at him. “You heard Liana. This house appears every year on Halloween. We get out this year, but the house will be back next year, looking for new victims to trap.”

“Is there a way to stop the house from showing up?” Leo asks.

Liana shrugs. “Destroy it, probably. So it can’t come back.”

“How do we do that?”

“I don’t know,” she responds lightly. “If there even is a way. This house doesn’t exactly play by the rules of the physical plane of existence. Therefore any standard means of destroying a house wouldn’t work.”

“Maybe April can help,” Leo says after a moment. “She’s got powers.”

Liana glances at the girl in question. “Wrong kind.”

“How do you know without even trying?” he argues. “She could help. We all could.”

“I don’t even know if you can destroy the house,” Liana responds. “Never mind how to do it. But the one thing I do know is that you don’t have the power to do anything.”

“But we can at least try, right?” Leo keeps pushing. “If it’s an option, we should consider it; we have to find a way to stop the house.”

Liana sighs and shakes her head. “Look, you don’t get it. This house is magic. Your friend is half-alien. It’s not the right kind of power. It wouldn’t work.”

“How do you know I’m half-alien?” April asks, suddenly suspicious.

Liana hesitates. “I refer to anything I don’t understand as alien. I don’t understand the power you have; ergo it’s alien to me. Although apparently you just confirmed that you are.”

“And how do you know for sure her powers can’t help?” Raph asks, frowning hard at the ghost; everything she says or does just seems to put him more on edge.

Liana’s face screws up slightly in disbelief. “Because her powers are _alien_. The house is a demon. Their energies are on two completely different frequencies.” She sighs again and scrubs a hand through her hair. “Okay, let me put it like this. You guys are physical. I’m spiritual. The house is spiritual. You can touch me and touch the house but you can’t… _affect_ us in any way, because we exist at a different frequency from you. April’s powers are also at a different frequency. It just doesn’t… work like that.”

“How do you know so much about this?” Donnie asks.

She shrugs lightly. “When you die and become a part of the spiritual world, things just start making sense. I don’t really remember learning it, I just know that I know it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he says.

“Things like this rarely do,” she replies.

*

When Donnie checks his timer again, only another five minutes have passed.

Which still doesn’t sound right, because they’ve been walking for ages. Gone through plenty of rooms, passed plenty of doors, ignored a few trapped souls along the way – Liana had told them to do that; there was no way to help them.

It’s hard to tell if they’ve made any progress; the only one who knows where they’re going is Liana. And she… well, she’s not telling them everything.

Raph keeps glancing at her suspiciously; his position at Leo’s right shoulder and in front of the rest of the group is a very deliberate choice to put himself between the ghost and his brothers. He’s clearly tensed for a fight, on edge in case he needs to defend himself.

Mikey’s beginning to look tired. The house is taking its toll. He’s always been the most sensitive of them all, and the trapped souls crying out for help, well, they’re beginning to get to him. He tries not to pay attention, like Liana tells them to, but it’s hard. The voices whisper in his ear and he can feel their anguish in the air.

April and Casey have gravitated towards each other in the middle of the group. April is also watching the ghost with a veil of suspicion but Casey seems to be more interested in the way the house works: the rooms it sends them through on their path towards the front door. They’ve passed through so many, he’s beginning to wonder if it’s the house’s way of trying to keep them from their destination, increasing the distance they have to go to get there.

The only one who seems genuinely trustful of Liana’s intentions is Leo. Nobody would ever call Leo naïve but Raph is leaning towards it. Either that, or he has to consider the idea that maybe Liana could be a potential ally; something he disagrees with.

“Not much further now,” the aforementioned ghost speaks up, breaking the silence that has befallen the group. “I know it feels like you guys have just been walking for ages, but we are getting closer, I can assure you.”

“How can you tell we’re getting closer?” April asks.

Liana shrugs. “It feels stronger to me. It’s like listening to the radio: the closer you are, the louder it sounds.”

“How can you even sense it?”

“You spend enough time in the house, and even you’ll be able to feel it. It’s just one of those things you pick up when you become a ghost.”

There’s a mirror in the corner of the room; Raph shudders to look at it, remembering his last encounter with a mirror. He feels compelled to glance behind him and make sure the door is still there; interestingly enough, it is.

Mikey notices the mirror too. At this point, he’s drawn to anything that’s calling out for help.

Just like the light from the house when he’d first spotted it all those hours ago, the mirror beckons to him. It gets inside his head, under his skin, and calls for him to come closer. And he can’t help but listen to it, stepping away from the group.

It’s not until he’s right in front of the reflective surface that Raph gets the feeling something it wrong. He looks back to see Mikey right in front of the mirror, apparently oblivious to the black smoky figure reaching out from the mirror to grab him.

“Hey!” he yells, causing everyone to jump with alarm. “Mikey!”

Mikey, as before, doesn’t appear to hear him. He’s reaching out to touch the mirror, while the smoky figure wraps itself around his wrist, drawing him closer.

“Hey!” Raph runs for his brother, pulling out his sai as he does so, reaching to grab for Mikey. “Get away from my little brother!”

“No, wait!” he hears Liana shout.

He brings his sai down in an attack on the smoky figure, cutting straight through it.

There’s a smash.

Raph looks down at where his sai has impacted the mirror. The glass of the reflective surface is shattered outwards from his weapon’s strike. The black smoky figure is gone, disappeared like a puff of, well, smoke. Mikey blinks, his eyes wide, as he looks between his brother and the mirror that had apparently tried to steal him. Then he slowly backs away.

As Raph stares at the broken mirror, a dark red substance begins seeping out of the cracks in the reflection. With horror, he realizes it’s blood.

A shriek of pain rises in the room, piercing the eardrums of anyone who can hear it. Liana ushers the rest of the group quickly through to the next room, before the increasing volume of the scream causes any permanent damage to their hearing.

Raph stumbles back from the mirror, staring down at his hands and his weapon in shock. Leo’s hand finds his shoulder, guiding him through the doorway, away from the mirror. Liana shuts the door firmly behind them, cutting off the shrieks of pain. Raph slides to the ground, still staring at his sai.

His hands are shaking, his breath coming in short, panicky puffs. He’s never felt so… unstable before. Distantly, he thinks the house is probably bleeding into his emotions, but right now, wrapping his head around the fact that he caused that kind of pain and bleeding with his weapons; he’d never thought he’d do that. Even fighting the purple dragons and the foot and the Kraang, he’s never actually stabbed them or caused any kind of injury other than bruises. He slashes the robot bodies apart but he’s never injured the thing inside, despite desires to do just that. But if this is what it feels like when it’s an accident, the very thought of doing that on purpose repulses him.

“Did I–Did I kill her?” he hears himself ask, still staring at his weapons in shock.

Leo steps forward to comfort him, but his elder brother isn’t really sure what Raph did so he doesn’t say anything for a long moment; he doesn’t know which words are best.

“No.”

They both startle at Liana’s voice, the girl eavesdropping on their moment.

“No,” she repeats. “You didn’t kill her. She was already dead. You just set her spirit free. You saved her.”

“But the blood,” Raph argues. “The screaming.”

“It’s all just special effects. She had no blood. She had no body. The house is trying to freak you out. It’s what it does.”

Raph looks back down at his sai and while Donnie and Mikey crowd around to help him feel better, Leo withdraws, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“So to free all those people we passed on the way here, we’d just have to destroy the object that they’re trapped in?”

“It’s a pretty standard method,” Liana agrees.

“So why don’t we?”

“Leonardo, we can’t,” Liana shakes her head regretfully; Leo frowns. “There must be a thousand people trapped in the house right now; if we wanna get you all out of here before the house disappears, we can’t go back and free them. We just don’t have the time. And even if we did, by the time we’d gotten to everyone in the house right now, there’d be a thousand more souls trapped and asking for help; we’d never be done.”

“There must be some way to help them?”

“There is,” April interjects. “We’d have to destroy the house. It’s the only way to free everyone already in the house and prevent more people from being trapped.”

“But you said we can’t do that,” Leo looks dejectedly at the ghost.

She looks conflicted: the faintest of frowns on her face, biting her lip, an almost guilty look in her eyes. She looks like she wants to say something so Leo waits: he doesn’t want to pressure her to speak and then cause her to clam up instead.

She seems to come to a decision, meets his eyes and opens her mouth to speak.

“ _Are you my mummy?_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was a [Doctor Who reference](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K91dLbiHR14) at the end there; although nothing quite as creepy, I'm afraid.
> 
> I mentioned before about having plans for some TMNT fanfiction revolving around my OC and her adventures within their world. There is some minor foreshadowing of those stories in this one; in particular, her relationship with some of the main characters.
> 
> Also, I can't believe I didn't think to use Halsey lyrics for the chapter summaries before now; because there's so many that would have worked (eg _the house was awake, the shadows and monsters_ or _And all the kids cried out, "Please stop, you're scaring me"_ ).

**Author's Note:**

> This work is unbeta'd; feel free to comment any errors you find. Constructive criticism is appreciated.
> 
> [find me on tumblr](http://lxestrella.tumblr.com/).


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